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Coffee Filling

A sweet coffee-flavored custard used as a filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Filling

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stir the corn-starch into the hot milk.

  2. Combine this mixture with the beaten eggs and sugar.

  3. Set over the fire and stir for 3 minutes.

  4. When almost cold, beat in the cold coffee.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + coffeetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the filling.
Corn-starch
Starch granules swell with heat and thicken the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and slightly delays the eggs from setting.
Black coffee
Supplies the coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Set over the fire and stir for 3 minutes.. Egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly, letting the starch thicken the custard smoothly before the eggs set.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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